Cardinals beat Indians in finale

NEW BREMEN - A couple early bad snaps by New Bremen could have been game-changers, but the Cardinals persevered and rolled to a 34-8 victory over Fort Recovery Friday night in the regular season finale at Cardinal Stadium.

Forced to punt on its first possession of the game, New Bremen punter Colten Muether had the snap sail well over his head. He retreated about 20 yards to scoop up the loose ball and try to get some sort of punt off, but it was blocked with the Indians recovering at the New Bremen nine yard line.

But from there, four Fort Recovery running plays netted four yards, as the Indians turned the ball over on downs, failing to grab the early lead and the momentum.

"Potentially it would have been big if we could have scored, because then we could have played with the lead," Fort Recovery coach Brent Niekamp said. "But you have to credit New Bremen because their defense is pretty darn good. They've got a lot of fast, physical guys and they made some nice plays to stop us from scoring off that blocked punt."

"We faced some adversity at times tonight, and that punt early on was some major adversity," New Bremen coach Chris Schmidt said. "At that point, as a coach, you're just hoping to hold them to a field goal. We ended up getting off the field without giving up anything, and that was huge."

Following the defensive stop, New Bremen put together an impressive drive. A 12-yard pass from quarterback David Homan to Nick Alig set the Cardinals up with a first-and-goal at the one.

But then disaster struck again.

Homan, in the shotgun formation, had a low snap shoot between his legs and roll all the way back to the 19 yard line before he was able to fall on it.

The miscue ultimately forced the Cardinals to settle for a 27-yard field goal by Owen Gabel with 1:15 left in the first quarter.

New Bremen was able to find the end zone on its next possession. The Homan-to-Alig connection began the drive with a 26-yard completion, and ended the drive with a 13-yard scoring strike.

Gabel's PAT kick gave the Cards a 10-0 lead with 6:42 left in the half.

Two possessions later Gabel closed out the first-half scoring with a 38-yard field goal.

Despite gaining just two first downs and 18 net yards in the first half, the Indians were still within two scores, which Niekamp credited to his defense.

"Especially in the first half, I thought our defense played really well," he said. "Of course there's always a few plays you wish you had back, but overall we're playing physical, and we're giving ourselves chances to make plays defensively. Our inability to do anything offensively was really the difference. We're just not really built to come back from being down multiple scores."

A whiffed onside kick attempt to start the second half gave New Bremen the ball at the Fort Recovery 44. The Cardinals took advantage of the good field position with a seven-play scoring drive capped off by an eight-yard run by Hunter Schaefer.

The Tribe answered with its only score of the night, a 19-yard pass from Cale Rammel to Troy Homan on the first play of the fourth quarter.

Schaefer, who finished the game with 109 yards rushing, added touchdown runs of 15 and 22 yards in the fourth quarter to round out the scoring.

"Offensively we did good things most of the night, but it seems as though there was a play here or there that kind of threw us off track," Schmidt said. "I thought our defense did a great job against one of the league's best running backs (Riley Hiser), and some of the tough offensive schemes that Fort Recovery runs."

New Bremen (7-3) will most likely open defense of its Division VII State Championship a week from today with a home game. Final playoff pairings and placements will be announced Sunday.

With the regional playoffs expanded to 16 teams this year, Niekamp believes his 3-7 Indians still have a shot at making the playoffs in Division VI.

"I'm excited about the possibility," he said. "We'll always take another week of football."